808: The Economic Argument

The Economic Argument

|< < Prev #808 (October 20, 2010) Next > >|

Title text: Not to be confused with 'making money selling this stuff to OTHER people who think it works', which corporate accountants and actuaries have zero problems with.

|< < Prev Random Explanation Next > >|

Explanation

The image shows fields of human life that would be greatly improved and/or allow certain people to make a lot of money if some crazy phenomena (mostly paranormal) actually worked in reality or were testable and usable concepts. Crazy phenomena, in this case, means counter-intuitive things that go against common sense and which science often contradicts (though relativity and QM are a major part of physics, they are still counterintuitive and could be considered to sound crazy). As the comic tries to prove, if there were commercial use for it and proofs of it working, there will be high investment made in the technology to use and harness such concepts.

So far only relativity and quantum electrodynamics have major evidence backing them. Specifically, the theory of relativity is heavily embedded into how your Global Positioning System (GPS) device synchronizes with satellites a hundred miles in the air and calculates your current position. The design of modern circuit-boards and other electronic devices is influenced by quantum electrodynamics — smartphones or high capacity hard drives wouldn't be possible without this theory.

The non-scientific/disproved concepts trying to pass as real and scientific are:

• Remote viewing: Alleged ability to see and know things far away with the strength of your mind, without physically being in that place or using technology (cameras, TV screens and so on).
• Dowsing: Alleged supernatural ability to sense, using two dowsing rods/sticks/pieces of metal where underground water/oil supplies or hidden valuables are.
  • Both dowsing and remote viewing would have greatly cut costs to oil companies, because it would have made finding new oil sources easier. The U.S. Army did seriously study remote viewing and other paranormal abilities in a series of programs collectively known as the Stargate Project, depicted in the 2004 book and 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats; however, the project was concluded in 1995 after reviews concluded that the rate of successful divination of actionable intelligence was no greater than that of random chance.

• Auras: Non-scientific belief that every human has an invisible "energy field" that can reveal and/or affect their health and feelings.
• Homeopathy: Pseudoscientific belief that the more diluted a remedy, the more effective it is, and that the remedy should, before dilution, cause similar symptoms to the disease it is said to cure. These "remedies" are often diluted so much that, usually, not even a single molecule of the original substance will remain. It is completely untrue, and proven no more effective than a placebo, so one can instead use much cheaper non-'treated' glucose and have the same effect. It is often advertised as an "alternative medicine".
• Remote Prayer: Non-scientific belief. Trying to help a person with their health problems by praying/pleading to a greater supernatural force to help them get better. While we're not ones to rag on anybody's religion, we don't have scientific proof or empirical evidence of it working; if anything, intercessory prayer seems to sometimes have a detrimental effect if the person knows they are prayed for (most probably due to causing extra stress).
  • All three would have revolutionized healthcare if proven to work, which is very, very unlikely. Tim Minchin remarked in his beat poem Storm (released the year before this comic, adapted into an animated short film the year after) that "alternative medicine that's been proved to work" is simply..."medicine".

• Astrology: Trying to predict the future by studying the motions of the planets for answers - a non-scientific and very popular belief that tries to look scientific; this was a major focus of astronomy until science began to disprove it in the 1600s.
• Tarot: Trying to predict the future through dealing a special deck of cards.
  • Both would have revolutionized our business planning, saving lots of money and lives, if true.

• Crystal energy: Non-scientific belief that crystals can store "soul energy" which can be tapped into and used by human beings.
  • If true and correct, it would have revolutionized the world's technology by replacing energy sources with crystals.

• Curses and hexes: Non-scientific belief that a person can cause supernatural harm to people and things by doing certain magical rituals and mouthing magical words.
  • If it were true, the military use of such would have proliferated rather quickly.

The title text points out that many people still believe in non-scientific, unproven, and disproved phenomena; thus, it's possible to make a lot of money by selling those (claimed) phenomena to such people (although knowingly selling non-existent phenomena, while claiming that they work, would be fraud, and thus illegal).

Transcript

[A three-column table. The headings are actually standing above the table.]

Crazy phenomenon	If it worked, companies would be using it to make a killing in...	Are they?
Remote Viewing	Oil Prospecting
Dowsing
Auras	Health Care Cost Reduction
Homeopathy
Remote Prayer
Astrology	Financial/Business Planning
Tarot
Crystal Energy	Regular Energy
Curses, Hexes	The Military
Relativity	GPS Devices	✓
Quantum Electrodynamics	Semiconductor Circuit Design	✓

Eventually, arguing that these things work means arguing that modern capitalism isn't that ruthlessly profit-focused.

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

Sorry if this seems like it is not proofread, English is my second language so I used spellchecker as much as I could. No grammar checker, though :(. I won't be making any more redirects, either. So, there's that. Youngstormlord (talk) 12:54, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

The Reagans used astrology to run USA. When he sacked all the air traffic controllers he must have saved a fortune in paraffin.

Does remote viewing include looking at contour maps because I am working on that. 1. Are you sure that the oil industry has tried it? 2. Are you sure it doesn't work?

How does one decide which value of T or t to use for relativity equations? Is it on the list? I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 00:48, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Have you read Grey Matter, by David Levy? He uses prayer in neurosurgery, but he doesn't get paid more for it.

Why is "weird phenomena" in quotes when the comic uses the phrase "crazy phenomenon"? 108.162.238.76 02:40, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, the U.S. Military, through its contractor Stanford Research Institute, in the 1970s spent $20 million researching remote viewing as a military spy tool, in part out of fear of a Russian ESP-gap. 173.245.54.36 20:11, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Companies ARE already making a killing in "health care cost reductions" through homeopathy and such, by selling homeopathic medicine and services to gullible fools who believe it can cure their very expensive diseases, and believing they are saving tons of money in doing so. Doesn't mean that it works though. I like the comic, but the premise is a bit short-sighted. 162.158.126.4 12:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I guess reading the title text is just way too difficult. 172.68.47.222 07:30, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

No explanation as to the references to corporate accountants and actuaries? Perhaps they offer services which are only "believed" to work? 108.162.242.9 16:53, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

In 2021 Polish government put forward a tender for 300 mobile field altars. So you could add a line: (Column 1) Prayer (Column 2) Military (Column 3) Yes, someome does that. 162.158.103.64 21:37, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I mean, Poland is a highly Catholic country; it's just courtesy for the government (which is mostly Catholic as well) to make sure the soldiers can still worship while they're on active duty. It doesn't provide altars for civilians, because the Catholic Church does that (though the Church also provides the military chaplains who use the altars). Not to mention that prayer has never been put forward (except by idiots) as a sort of divine vending machine from which you will (if God exists) always get what you want; you might just as well say that because a friend sometimes turns down your favor requests for your own good, it's because "asking" doesn't work. ---S

Also, to get something straightened out that several of the editors here (and Randall) understandably never think about: every "answer to prayer" is either a miracle --- that is to say, it's not caused by other natural events that occurred in previous history and comes straight from God --- or it isn't. Answers of the second class are obviously much more common, regardless of whether you believe "God" or "miracles" exist at all. Now you could say that an "answer to prayer" of class #2 "would have happened anyway" because you can see the physical causes that led up to it and they don't seem correlated to your prayer, but that argument presupposes that God (like a human friend) experiences time the way we do --- future becoming present becoming past --- whereas it's immensely more likely that, if God exists, time is one of His creations, like everything else. Thus, the Creation would be taking place at every point of space and time, and all times would be Now to God, meaning that your future prayer (or future from your perspective) was taken into account when God first created the universe and the chain of physical causes leading up to it. C.S. Lewis explains it better in his book Miracles (appendix A) than I can, but something else he stressed was that it's impossible to know empirically whether a non-miraculous event was an answer to prayer or not --- and if you think about it, you can see that this is probably a good thing. Someone who knew his prayer had been answered "would feel like a magician", feel as if he had exercised some control over God, as if he were a being on God's own level. I am not here arguing for God's existence; I'm saying only that the fact that petitionary prayers are sometimes refused, and sometimes not, is hardly evidence that prayer "doesn't work" --- because no one could reasonably expect it "always to work" in the first place like a physical process, if the Being on the other end of the prayer had a mind and will of Its own and got to decide whether your prayer should be answered or not. 76.94.38.95 (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

A counter-example: How thousands of companies ended up using a bogus psychology test on their staff | The IndependentOoker (talk) 05:18, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that's explained by the alt-text: Not to be confused with 'making money selling this stuff to OTHER people who think it works', which corporate accountants and actuaries have zero problems with. 24.206.89.106 (talk) 20:20, 27 October 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
        Add comment